Apparatus for wrapping, banding, or otherwise packaging loads or articles generally comprises a framework defining a wrapping, banding, or packaging station for receiving the articles or load to wrapped, banded, or packaged, and a rotating and vertically reciprocable wrapping, banding, or packaging material dispensing unit supported upon the framework for rotation about the articles or load so as to wrap, band, or package the same. The load or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged usually comprise opposed pairs of vertical sides wherein adjacent sides meet at an angle so as to define a vertically extending corner therebetween. The load or articles also usually have an upper horizontally disposed surface which includes a plurality of horizontally disposed upper edges extending between the upper ends of the vertically extending corners. Prior to wrapping, banding, or otherwise packaging the load or articles, it is often desirable to apply corner protectors to the corner regions of the load or articles, and to apply a top or cap protector to the top region of the load or articles in order to protect the vertically extending corner and upper edge regions of the load or articles from being crushed by the wrapping or packaging film, or the strapping or banding, or from being crushed or otherwise damaged during transportation, shipping, or storage of the wrapped, packaged, or strapped or banded load or articles.
The corner protectors are generally made from paper or paperboard material which are pre-folded so as to define a pair of panels which meet at an angle and have interior surfaces which form interior corners for correspondingly mating with the exterior corners of the load or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged. The apparatus for applying a corner protector onto the load or articles generally comprises, for each corner region of the load or articles, a magazine for storing a plurality or supply of the corner protectors, and a pick-up or transfer mechanism operatively associated with the magazine for removing a corner protector from the magazine and transferring the corner protector to the particular or corresponding corner of the load or articles. One such type of apparatus which has heretofore been proposed, and which is currently well-known in the industry, is that disclosed within the U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,572, the complete disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. As noted more particularly within the aforenoted U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,572, once the corner protectors are mounted upon or disposed adjacent to or in abutment with the external corner regions of the load or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, wrapping, packaging, or banding of the load or articles is then initiated, and while the initial stage of the wrapping, packaging, or banding of the load or articles is being accomplished, the corner protector pick-up or transfer mechanisms are withdrawn and readied for a subsequent operational cycle whereby the next set of corner protectors will be applied to external corner regions of a different load or set of articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged.
While the apparatus disclosed within the aforenoted U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,572 has been quite satisfactory from an operational viewpoint, and has been quite commercially successful, it is of course readily noted that such apparatus is operationally programmed or configured in effect to simultaneously apply corner protectors upon all four corners of a palletized load or set of articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, wherein the corner protectors being applied to the load or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged necessarily comprise substantially the same length or height dimension corresponding of course to the height dimension of the load or set of articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged. Consequently, should different sets of articles or loads, to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, comprise different length or height dimensions, the apparatus disclosed within the aforenoted U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,572 would not be able to readily accommodate the wrapping, banding, or packaging needs attendant such loads or articles having such differing height or length dimensions due to the fact that the corner protectors have predetermined length dimensions which would obviously correspond to, for example, a first set of the loads or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, and would not properly correspond to a second set of the loads or articles having height or length dimensions which are different from the first set of loads or articles and the corner protectors corresponding thereto.
Under the foregoing circumstances, the manufacturing or packaging facility would have to necessarily institute alternative or optional modes of operation in order to be capable of utilizing the wrapping, banding, or packaging apparatus disclosed within the aforenoted U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,572. More particularly, one optional mode of operation would be to pre-sort the loads or articles, to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, into groups of loads or articles having substantially the same length or height dimensions whereby all of the groups of loads or articles having a first common length or height dimension would be conveyed to the wrapping, banding, or packaging station so as to wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, and subsequently, all of the groups of loads or articles having a second common length or height dimension would then be conveyed to the wrapping, banding, or packaging station so as to be appropriately wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged. Such a mode of operation, however, is not particularly desirable from the viewpoint that the same is time-consuming and inefficient in that the loads or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged must necessarily be pre-sorted and cannot be processed, that is, wrapped, banded, or packaged, in an essentially random manner according, for example, to the timed order in which customer requests or orders are received. A correlated mode of operation might constitute the routing of such pre-sorted loads or articles along two different processing paths leading to separate or different wrapping, banding, or packaging stations and associated equipment which can handle such loads or articles having such different length or height dimensions, however, such a mode of operation obviously entails significantly increased equipment costs, layout space, and the like.
A third mode of operation might constitute the routing of the loads or articles, having the different height or length dimensions, along the single conveyor path to the single wrapping, banding, or packaging station and associated equipment, in a random manner and without any pre-sorting of the articles or loads into groups having a common length or height dimension, and the subsequent wrapping, banding, or packaging of the same. However, when loads or articles having different length or height dimensions are introduced, positioned, or located at the wrapping, banding, or packaging station, the wrapping, banding, or packaging equipment or apparatus would have to necessarily be shut down for a predetermined period of time in order to permit operator personnel to load the corner protector magazines with the appropriately dimensioned corner protectors, and in addition, the equipment may have to be, in effect, re-programmed such that the corner protectors are disposed at proper elevational positions with respect to the loads or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged. Obviously, such a mode of operation would be highly labor-intensive and operationally inefficient.
A need therefore exists in the art for a new and improved apparatus, and a method of operating the same, wherein loads or articles to be wrapped, banded, or otherwise packaged, and having different length or height dimensions, can be conveyed to a single wrapping, banding, or packaging station in a random manner and nevertheless be wrapped, banded, or packaged in a continuous flow-through process without the system necessarily being, in effect, temporarily shut down so as to install or exchange corner protectors of the proper or appropriate size, within the corner protector magazines, corresponding to the particular load or article, to be wrapped, banded, or packaged, currently disposed or located at the wrapping, banding, or packaging station.